hunting season

I close myself off when I need help the most. I close myself off from the ones who love and believe in me the most. I close myself off because I believe that I deserve nothing but the bare minimum. I close myself off because I do not know how to accept and receive that love, help and support. I close myself off because I've learned how to self-care and self- preserve otherwise. 

My struggles do not exist in a vacuum, but rather, are part of a larger narrative and collection of experiences. 

Being a person of color often feels similar to that voyeuristic element and participation that occurs in museums; the sense of always being on display. Of having to perform. An open field to be looked at, critiqued picked and pulled apart. Hunting season for the white gaze. 

We self- edit and self-regulate ourselves. 

Emotionally gut wrenching and visceral.  

dancing smoke

Thick smoke fills the apartment full of roaches, and I imagine it dancing. 

I spin under it as it envelops me,
and I so desperately want to become it, easily disappearing in the air. 

In the smoke I’ve made a friend, 

One who keeps me company while my mother holds her cigarette in her hands

Every time she smokes, my friend returns, 

and I trail after it...as I desperately trail after her. 

We danced together, the smoke and I. 

Gray clouds that I floated on. 

She concentrated on every inhale, every blow, 

So I started to flush them down the toilet, hoping that would bring me some attention, but it didn't work. 

My friend came back, and I said I was sorry, said my mother loved her more than her daughter’s own folly. 

The smoke took a disliking towards me, 

and the air made me choke, 

and I sucked on my pacifier, 

hoping to revoke, 

all the memories of our friendship, 

as a means to cope. 

Until my mom burned her cigarette on my arm...

Sure it was unintentional, a quick lagging in her arm 

but I grew resentful and stopped chasing after her. 

With me not after her, there was no smoke to comfort me, and I was truly alone. 

And when I became 16, I still danced alone, no father to admire how much I had grown. 

ON BEING MIXED RACE- Based on my experience in America, the DominicanRepublic and Paris.

Being mix race is a very interesting "concept," especially as a Dominican. Before NYU I identified solely as Dominican. I identified as Dominican before I even identified as mix-race and way before I had to acknowledged that being mixed race entailed being both white and black. 

It’s not that Dominicans are denying that they are black, is just that as mix race country, who has experienced quite a lot of oppression (from Spanish colonizers, to when Haiti seized control for a brief period, to the Trujillo dictatorship), we do not think of it as “white and black” the way it is thought about in America, who has a particularly distinct concept of blackness and whiteness (obviously, with Jim Crowe laws, “Sep. but equal," KKK, war on drugs etc etc etc etc). 

Being a white Dominican is not at all the same thing as being white in America, so if you told a white Dominican they are white they will just say, no I’m Dominican. If you told a black Dominican that they are black, they will just say no, I’m Dominican. It’s about ethnicity NOT about “race.” Understand this before you get heated up because America sees "race" and not ethnicity. 

la petite femme

La petite femme.

En fait, elle n’est pas petit,

Seulement dans sa peau

Elle veut être petite,

Car elle veut une homme plus grand qu’elle à venir,

à venir dans sa peau,

de vivre dans sa peau.

être une seule âme, un esprit, mais deux corps

daddy's little girl

Broken women are looking for a god 

and men are looking for broken women

He takes her, goes in,

she relunquishes herself to him. 

Virginity: masked with big, nice, round titties

Virginity: masked with big thighs, the size of cities

<<She's cumming>>

                        //She came//

She comforts herself because it's to a church she came. 

And at the end of his torso is where she kneels and prays. 

the little island descendant that could

She drowned in a blue dress

The fabric hugging every curve; every inch with every turn

It was as if she was going deep under the Caribbean sea

The waves hugging every curve; every inch with every turn

And she came up,

Her beautiful Dominican island in her hand

And she showed the world

That even people like her can

Dimple

I wanted to dive into his dimple

and drown in his soul,

until I found his heart;

my personal prize to hold. 

el hombre que prive en sol para robar mi inocencia

Quien será el, el que se esconderá detrás de cortinas para reemplazar la realidad. Detrás de cortinas el se asombrará, con la decepción del sol tratando de romper la oscuridad. El se hace el sol, se hace el dios. Y mi inocencia se llevará, y yo se la daré por que el me convencerá.  

desiertos ojos

Cuando yo miro en el espejo, no reconozco la quien veo. Es culpa de la sociedad, los que dictan qu'es feo. 

Miro en mis ojos, lo que se parece desiertos solitarios. Parecen una ruina de arena oscura, como el dolor en mi pecho que siento diario. 

Busco un hombre mayor, de forma en papa.

Yo me analizo yo misma, para que ustedes no sean capaz. 

Imagino qu'el será tan como el color de mis ojos. Una mezcla de chocolate somos. El se perderá en mis ojos desiertos, y yo en sus manos. Y mil besos me traerá, y mil desiertos en cual se hundirá.  

Mujer

Adivinas lo que se esconde en cada curva de mi cuerpo. Son secretos desde nacimiento, secretos acumulados por tiempo. La mujer es una figura, la cual debe de ser entendida. Busca conocimiento de ella, a travez de su postura. Busca conocimiento de ella en forma de travesuras.